I think that also has a lot to do with the languages themselves. Chinese is incredibly intimidating to a non-native speaker because of all the tones and inflections, whereas Japanese and Korean are much easier to pick up. It's incredibly difficult to pick up the subtleties in tonal differences unless you grew up hearing it.

I'd argue it has more to do with political economy issues. The reason why we like Japanese culture now is because they're considered an ally. That wasn't so in the Second World War or in the 1980s (when the collapse of American auto was blamed on the rise of Japanese auto). Then, things such as "Japanese intelligence" was viewed as "Japanese sneakiness." And "Japanese reverence" was seen as "susceptibility to fascism."

Likewise, if you look at press before 9/11, it was said that the biggest threat to American interests was the rise of China. That's faded into the background a bit now with concerns over angry Muslims and the Middle East, but it's still there. The West didn't see China as much of a threat before the Opium Wars, and I'd argue this also has some influence on why we think of Chinese culture as cheap and superficial now, versus back then, when Chinese culture was considered very "advanced."

Incidentally, I also think part of hate against intellectual theory in art has to do with the fact that most didactic art is either Marxist or post-modern, which aren't very popular theories today (outside of academia, anyway). When those theories were popular (60s and 70s), people liked art that expressed those ideas.

why we think of Chinese culture as cheap and superficial now, versus back then, when Chinese culture was considered very "advanced."

Also in part due to the inundation of local supercorp. stores with MIC-labeled garbage and Chinatowns providing metropolitan regions with cheap or knockoff goods (note this isn't exclusively a sink-scam but visible due to concentration)

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Incidentally, I also think part of hate against intellectual theory in art has to do with the fact that most didactic art is either Marxist or post-modern, which aren't very popular theories today (outside of academia, anyway). When those theories were popular (60s and 70s), people liked art that expressed those ideas.

This isn't meant against you but whenever I see something described as post modern my first instinct is that the author doesn't know what is being discussed and uses this as a generically, unable to find a suitable paradigm

@dieworkwear i dunno, there are still plenty of people in the US seeing china as our primary global competition in the long run, just in terms of economics.

rft: i just started watching Space Dandy because my thought process was that I could watch something with modern (though bizarre) aesthetics or something with "what's cool at minimum 10 years ago" aesthetics (Champloo)

Again, I think that's inherent in the format. You can't really express an idea in an intellectual profound way without going through the pains of reading and writing. A song, movie, painting, or piece of clothing is always going to be intellectual superficial or "clumsy" because the person creating it doesn't have the liberty to iron out all the nuances through pages and pages of writing. Heidegger's work can't be condensed into a jacket or painting, but it's interesting if someone's art is actually inspired by Heidegger's works.

I meant the writing in the designer's statement is clumsy. I think it's awesome if a designer, painter, whatever can find a way to deal with Heidegger in their work.